StephenSusco Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I already like the sound of this one: After taking a puff alongside the school stoner, a high school valedictorian decides to get the whole student body stoned, enough so for them to collectively fail the same drug test he finds himself up against.

That's the thrust behind the new comedy High School, which looks to begin production in early November, and according to this Variety notice, Adrien Brody (The Brothers Bloom) has signed on to play a drug dealer, while Michael Chiklis (Eagle Eye) will take up the role of principal, a move that'll likely play to his stoic strengths. (Bruce Willis worked wonders with a similar part in the still unreleased Assassination of a High School President; a greater pity because it's a fairly fun little flick overall.)

There is only so much else left to say about the project. It'll be directed by John Stalberg Jr., who co-wrote the screenplay with Stephen Susco (of the Grudge films) and... that's really about it for now, though -- dare I suggest -- Stalberg and Susco still have time to throw the word 'Musical' into that title somewhere and simply wait for the money to roll in. Either way, it sounds like a shortage of green will be the least of their worries.

Yeah, you know John Stockwell. Every movie nerd should. He directed Into the Blue, Turistas, Blue Crush... OK, he played cool kid Dennis Guilder in John Carpenter's Christine. That's how most movie nerds know the guy. (He's actually been in a whole bunch of movies, like Top Gun and Losin' It and ... My Science Project.) So now it looks like Mr. Stockwell has his next directorial gig lined up, and he'll be working with one of the horror adaptation specialists.

THR informs us that Stockwell will direct Sanctuary, which sounds a bit like Sleeping With the Enemy, only with a horror twist: A woman and her son take refuge from her terrible ex-husband, only the island they've chosen just might be haunted. Oops. The screenplay comes from Stephen Susco, he of The Grudge, The Grudge 2, and Red, and it's based on the novel Bad Men, by John Connolly. Umm, and based on some of the things I just read at the novel's Amazon page, it's something I'll definitely pick up once I'm done reading this very fun book.

No word on why they didn't stick with the original title. I think it's much cooler.

With only two feature films (The Grudge and The Grudge 2) under his belt (both of which are adaptations of someone else's screenplay), writer Stephen Susco is about the make a leap into the director's chair. Hey, anything to keep the guy's mind off of The Grudge 3 is just fine by me.

Mr. Susco will be writing and directing a film called White for the folks at Rogue, aka Focus, aka Universal Pictures. Based on the novella by Tim Lebbon, White is (according to Variety) "an apocalyptic tale centering on a band of people trapped in a blizzard and systematically picked off by mysterious phantoms." So ... no freaky Asian kids who hang around in attics? Cool.

Also on Susco's plate are the indie horror Zero Dark Thirty and a new spec script he just unloaded called Sanctuary.